"empowerment" is a disempowering concept

[Paul Roberts]

Harrison -

Thanks much for the extended reply.  I think you hit the nail on the head
in your diagnosis.  Right now I'm in the middle of "Leading for Change" by
John Kotter.  I'm not sure if the two of you would agree on the solution,
but you both seem to be articulating a lot of the problem in the same way.

Kotter makes the point that, the 20th century, in response to the evolution
of the social organism, required great managers to lead high performing
organizations.  Enter the MBA program and it's apostles.

>From Kotter's perspective, as I understand it, this became a double-edged
sword...an Achilles heal as you say: most corporate organizations have
little or no leadership and way too much management.

The result is a company that gets to be superb at doing it's thing...but
very poor at adapting to the inevitable demands for change.  He mentions,
as do you, the emergence of arrogance as one of the kinks in the pipe (of
Spirit, or Tao) that prevent the flow into new forms.

One of the questions that intrigues me, and around which I am doing my
work, is how to engage this system:  where do we locate the carrot, as we
work alongside the corporation (or inside it...not my personal preference
at this point in time)?  How can the corporate structure make the
transition into a new, more open structure that reflects evolution on the
Spiral?  I know Ken Wilber is addressing about the same things in his
Integral Institute...and so does the Apostle Paul, in talking about his own
stealth strategy of missionizing:  being wise as a serpent, and harmless as
a dove.

In SD terms, the generic recommendation  for optimal faciliation (midwifing
if you prefer) for an organization stuck in a level and experiencing the
negative chaos that stuckness leads to calls for relating to the
organization from half a step up on the Spiral.  Relate from too much more
than that, and the facilitation is rejected as too weird, too far out, too
impractical.  That's the "prophet" problem.  Most C-level people would
simply turn off anyone who goes into them talking about a corporate morph
into chaordic or interactive.  Sure, Dee Hock did incredible things
starting VISA...but try selling that to the board at Citigroup.  As Dee all
but admits in his book, you probably couldn't even sell it to VISA at this
time.

So where do we locate the carrot?  How do we present the kind of growth you
are talking about as a doable option...in such a way that the
organization's managers will become leaders, and give up their addiction to
command/control in response to the leading of spirit.   How do we frame
this as an elephant that can actually be eaten one bite at a time?

As an Episcopal priest, I'm sure you relate to the story of the emergence
from Egypt of Moses and the 40 year wandering in the promised land.  The
question is:  Is it really necessary for everyone (Joshua and Caleb
excepted) to die off before transition into the new place is possible?

I speak in terms of mythos, but the reality of that inability to adapt in
our generation is terrible personal cost for many many good people who
depend in very practical ways on our corporations.  Ike wasn't far off when
he said in the '50's that what's good for General Motors is good for the
USA.

When the company fails, the company town shuts down.  People are radically
displaced, families collapse, children suffer abandonment.  Some people
might think that there is no other way...that the cycle of life requires
total destruction of one form for the emergence of the next to occur.

I am not so convinced...

Last summer my partner and I visited a beautiful intentional community here
on the east coast.  It was seeded from a well known, influential community
in another part of the world.  On the weekend I was there there were about
10 or so visitors from other communities looking to trade ideas, etc.

The community happens to be located right next to FIVE major colleges and
universities.  And yet when I asked the community's founder about how much
interaction they had with these colleges, the answer was very little indeed.

That's the gap that both fascinates and disturbs me...the itch I want to
scratch:

Here is a change wizard of no small vision and accomplishment.  Yet he
admitted to me that he had no clue how to work in his backyard as a Spiral
Wizard...influencing young people who are not interested in making a
radical transformation personally into that kind of life, but might carry
some of his values into a more "conventional" life:  people who would find
themselves working in just a few years at GE, Accenture, etc.

The disconnect comes as well in his having little or no ongoing dialogue
with the engineering/business/law/poly sci professors in these who
currently do work with the institutions that define much of our culture,
not just economically, but socially too.

Any Spiral Wizards got the calamine lotion?

Final thoughts:  Right now I am in the middle of a conversation on the
Yahoo Spiral Dynamics list about this topic: what pathology is about on any
of the levels of the spiral...why does it exist...are there any common core
components (which I like to think of as the fractals that create unhealthy
complexity from simplicity)...and (ultimately) what can be done to optimize
the path (create the space if you will) from pathology to health.

You mention arrogance.  I like the Greek term hubris...but, either way,
that strikes me as one of the fractals.  Fear might be another...shame a
third.

Best,
Paul Roberts

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